The O-train, the quickest way to and from campus these days, is out of service this summer as the city extends its light-rail line and the university responds with infrastructural improvements of its own, including a new parking garage near the tracks. The disruption got us thinking about some of the alternative, often season-dependent, modes of transportation students have used to get to Carleton over the years—from skis to skates to skateboards.

Which brings us to this classic bit of Canuckiana. If, as Pierre Berton once said, a Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine commuting to class in one. And that’s exactly what at least one arts student, Enid McNeill, did ca. 1964. She would paddle from her home near Hog’s Back, dock at Hartwell Locks and cross the footbridge to a campus then, as now, undergoing major construction—a seemingly perpetual state of affairs that some would say is the true inspiration for the university’s motto, Ours the Task Eternal.